Botany Downs

		<p>However many gaze across the evening<br> At these crowded tentacles of suburb?<br> Skulking gibboard ghettos bordered<br> By sanded concrete fringes, locking<br> The mediocre and the restless,<br> Fuming with resentment,<br> For a life that cannot be<br> Purchased from Mitre 10<br> Nor Farmers, nor the local Whare Nui,<br> Is not worth living.<br> It has too much uncertainty<br> And could be a source of stress.</p>

Back before the golden weather ended,
Sandy haired children ran in bare feet
Across the grass at Titirangi.
Their mothers yelled through cupped hands
Aprons flapping against doorframes,
The universal signal flag for dinner.
Boiled potatoes and gravy slopped across
The old man's plate while he bristled,
Anticipating punishment for indiscretions
Like speckled greenhouse glass punctured
By the orthoganal outline of a cricket ball,
Or grimy farthings prised out
Of sweaty hands stubbornly clutching
The missing milk money.

Now the young man is old again,
And the only universal signal
Is the blue flicker of channels
Changing at the hand of the Sky remote.
The rustling swill of six o'clock
Is swept away by the hum of traffic
On the Pakuranga expressway
And the whirring clatter
Of automatic garage doors.
Beige walls and red block roofs
Stacked across the downs,
The tiles of a new civilization
Beyond the stalking cinder cone
Of Rangitoto, which is barely visible
In the blue evening haze,
And not very interesting.
Rather, they gaze upward
From plates to the sports news
And the weather.